writing a life of his actor-friend, who then lay in a
new-made grave in St. Paul's Churchyard. The book was written, and
though few remember the volume now, it was widely read and served to
keep alive the actor's memory. Since that time the grave has been
cared for, and the marble tombstone, later erected by Edmund Kean,
still stands amid the bushes close by the entrance door of the Chapel.

It was in the year 1810 that Cooke played at the Park Theatre, the
first foreign "star" to come to the city and to attract the
townspeople in such wise that they almost mobbed the playhouse in
their efforts to see him. It was this same Cooke, who, hearing many
speak of a young actor who had played there the year before, said, "I
should have liked to have seen this Payne of yours." Cooke saw him the
next year, and they appeared together in this same Park Theatre, Payne
playing Edgar to Cooke's Lear.

The name of John Howard Payne did not then have the significance that
it came to have later. For he was known only as a youth who had acted
Norval in the tragedy of _Douglas_ with such fiery earnestness as to
be proclaimed the "Young American Roscius." Who could have foreseen
that adventurous "boy actor" grown to manhood, and writing a song that
was to live and be known the world over by reason of its appeal to all
hearts?

In Pearl Street, scarce a foot of which is left untrod by the
footsteps of the writers of the city, Payne was born. Around the
modest house that bore the number 33, near to Whitehall Street, he
first toddled with baby steps, and the nearby "broad" street, where
the canal had been, was his first journey when he could walk. His
parents moved to East Hampton, on Long Island, so early in his
childhood, and so many of his childish days were passed in the fields
there while his father taught school in the Clinton Academy, that
East Hampton is often spoken of as the place of his birth. But for all
that the "lowly thatched cottage" of his song was there, and for all
that much of his later life was passed in foreign countries, Payne
loved the city of his birth and took occasion many times to say so.

In London, when ill-luck bore hardest upon him, he wrote _Clari, the
Maid of Milan_, and gave _Home, Sweet Home_ to the heroine as her
principal song. He received the honors of New York when he returned
for a brief period, twenty-two years after his boyish triumph at the
Park Theatre, and was so affectionately remembered that